A wild sequence of about 30 seconds would be all you’d need to see to understand how frustrating and ultimately futile USD’s effort was against BYU on Saturday afternoon.

With six minutes left in the first half, Toreros sub Nick Kerr missed a jumper. Rebound by teammate Dennis Kramer, who dished to Johnny Dee.

Dee missed a 3-pointer, but teammate Jito Kok rebounded and passed to Kramer.

Kramer missed a jumper, hustled to get his own rebound, and missed a tip-in.

Kok rebounded and passed to Chris Sarbaugh, who had the ball stolen by BYU’s Josh Sharp.

Sharp found an open and streaking Matt Carlino, who made an uncontested layup to give BYU a 16-point first-half lead.

Four USD shots, four USD rebounds. Two BYU points. What's wrong with this picture? Too much work to make it look far too easy for BYU.

And so it went for the Toreros, who, despite overcoming the big deficit and leading in the second half, fell to the Cougars 78-70 in their West Coast Conference regular-season finale in front of 3,889 at Jenny Craig Pavilion.

The loss forced USD (16-15, 7-11 in WCC) to closely monitor Portland’s game at Pacific, where the Toreros needed the hosts to upset the Pilots so USD could secure the No. 6 seed and a first-round bye in next week’s conference tournament.

At least that ending went their way, with the Tigers overcoming a late, 10-point deficit to beat Portland, which also finished 7-10, but lost a tiebreaker because it was swept by the Toreros in two games this season.

So USD heads to Las Vegas, where it won’t play until Saturday against No. 3 seed San Francisco (20-10, 13-5), with extra time to heal (second-leading scorer Duda Sanadze came out with a heel injury) and figure out how to match the energy that teams such as BYU expend.

USD did that in its big win over Gonzaga last week, but was outmuscled in too many stretches against the Cougars (21-10, 13-5), who with the victory wrapped up second place in the WCC behind Gonzaga.

“I felt coming in today that maybe they were the most physical team in the conference,” USD coach Bill Grier said. “They’ve got older guys; they’re really aggressive and physical. … Going in, we talked about a hockey analogy of dropping the sticks and gloves and going at them.

“It took us about 10 minutes to figure out that we’ve got to fight back. They were caving us in on the glass and getting loose balls. Once our guys understood that I thought we really competed. We just didn’t finish it off.”

Grier spoke before the game of needing to limit the looks of the other players who support the WCC’s leading scorer, Tyler Haws. That didn’t happen. Haws scored 25, two points above his average, and three other Cougars were in double figures – Carlino (14), Anson Winder (11) and Kyle Collinsworth (10). Center Nate Austin was big on the boards with 10 rebounds.

USD guard Chris Anderson was the man who kept the Toreros pecking at BYU’s lead. The 5-feet-7 junior matched his season high with 22 points, and his six assists moved him into the school’s all-time lead, past Brandon Johnson, in the category with 527.

Anderson made a trio of 3-pointers in the last 10 minutes of the game. Back-to-back 3s gave USD a 56-54 lead with 9:24 left, but BYU went on an 8-2 run to regain a cushion. Another Anderson 3-pointer with 2:02 left cut the Cougars' lead to two.

But Collinsworth immediately answered with a 3 for a five-point lead, 70-65, and on the next three possessions, Dee – the hero against the Zags -- turned the ball over, missed a jumper and couldn’t make a 3-pointer.

Said Kok, who had his first double-double of the season with 10 points and 10 rebounds, “One of the problems we’ve had throughout the year is toward the end of the game, we don’t make plays and other teams do.”